


wake up, sunshine

by zombiepops



Category: The Boyz (Korea Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Rock Band, Alternate Universe - Romantic Comedy, Explicit Sexual Content, M/M, Past Relationship(s), Sangyeon is in a rock band, Sexual Humor, Sunwoo works as an insurance underwriter
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-21
Updated: 2020-11-21
Packaged: 2021-03-09 19:02:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,860
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27651061
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zombiepops/pseuds/zombiepops
Summary: Chanhee tells him that, now that he’s free to live his life virtually unrestricted, he should step out of his parent’s metaphorical house and dick someone down--or have someone dick him down, Chanhee didn’t judge. Sunwoo laughs. It’s the brief moment of clarity; that Hollywood film moment where everything in the story is building up, up, up. The audience holds their breath and the hero---which happens to be Sunwoo---tears himself from the comfort of his old life and sets out to get some good ol’ character development.“I can set up your Grindr account if you want me to,” Chanhee says, “It’s really easy."Now was his time for his major character development.
Relationships: Kim Sunwoo/Lee Sangyeon
Comments: 3
Kudos: 28





	wake up, sunshine

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sun_incarnate](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sun_incarnate/gifts), [](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts), [strawbrrycreme](https://archiveofourown.org/users/strawbrrycreme/gifts), [Connah](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Connah/gifts).

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Now, he’s laying on the recliner in his living room, waiting for Chanhee to come by with a beer in his hand. He looks back on it now and thinks about how stupid he was for breaking Anne’s heart like that. He looks back and thinks about how if he weren’t bothered by what people thought of him, or afraid to disappoint his parents, he would have realized that the reason why he didn't want to try for a baby with Anne was because he wasn’t interested in women. At all. 
> 
> After ten years of marriage to an amazing woman, Kim Sunwoo comes to the sudden realization that he was into men. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> playlist   
>  [wake up, sunshine soundtrack](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6lQVHCfbdgvtVA01eoo3vQ?si=RpdEQFcGQKOE-osxdyfPGg)

Sunwoo makes the difficult, but not so difficult, decision to leave the woman he called his wife of ten years, after months of phone calls back and forth from Chanhee telling him that marriage counseling can _not_ fix the fact that he’s not into women and that he married his wife to protect himself from his homophobic dad and his verbally abusive mom. Chanhee constantly reminds him of the fact that he’s thirty-five now and able to make his own decisions, that he is not bound to his parents anymore, and he deserves to live a happy life. 

He stares at the divorce papers, with both his and Anne’s signatures scrawled on the sign line and thinks _this is it._ He’s finally free. 

Now, don’t get him wrong, Anne is a kind person. He remembers the day they met: at a church camp back when he was fourteen. Sunwoo didn’t really want to be there and stayed inside while the rest of the kids his age throw themselves into the lake head first or sit outside under the sun and chat. The counselors looked at him strangely as he sat inside, but Anne stood by him. She introduces herself with a smile and they become friends. 

The rest is history, really. They get married, everything is fine for years and years--his parents are finally happy that he settled down with a respectable woman. Everything felt alright--he was settled down like everyone else his age (except for Chanhee, but he knew why) and was ready to live the rest of his life with Anne. 

Except for the fact that she wants kids. Sunwoo panics and stays panicked about it for five years, not because they couldn't support a child, but because Sunwoo did not want to have sex with her. 

Then, he gets served the divorce papers. 

Now, he’s laying on the recliner in his living room, waiting for Chanhee to come by with a beer in his hand. He looks back on it now and thinks about how stupid he was for breaking Anne’s heart like that. He looks back and thinks about how if he weren’t bothered by what people thought of him, or afraid to disappoint his parents, he would have realized that the reason why he didn't want to try for a baby with Anne was because he wasn’t interested in women. At all. 

After ten years of marriage to an amazing woman, Kim Sunwoo comes to the sudden realization that he was into men. 

+

The person who helps him through his sudden realization is, of course, a man by the name of Choi Chanhee. New, as he was called back in the day. They’ve been friends for so long that Sunwoo can't even count the years on both of his hands and when Sunwoo,s had a crisis Chanhee has always been there for him. 

So, it’s no surprise that when Sunwoo has his sexuality crisis as he and Anne finalize the divorce, Chanhee is there with a two litre of Coke, some cheese doodles, and a joint. They were going to talk about whatever was going on and it was gonna be until they ran out of things to say or joint to smoke. 

Simply put, they talked for a long _long_ while. And now, they’re going to do it again because Sunwoo is frankly tired of being single and wants to do something about it.

Chanhee says that Grindr works just fine for what he’s looking for, but Sunwoo doesn't even know where to begin with apps like that. He has so many questions that need answering, so many things that they need to talk about. Sunwoo, in a moment of clarity, wants to talk about everything now that he has the time. 

It’s a brief second, but sooner or later, Chanhee calls telling him to buzz him in. 

+

“People discover who they are late in life, too,” he says, “It’s normal.” 

“Yeah, but,” Sunwoo responds, “It feels like years wasted. It feels like I could have been happier so much earlier if I wasn’t so afraid--”

“Mulling over what could have been doesn’t help you in the now,” Chanhee says. He swishes the red wine in his glas around, “Now, you’ve just gotta live. You know who you are and you’re a grown ass adult, nobody makes the decisions for you but you.” 

It’s always been this way, but only now did Sunwoo have the courage to disappoint his parents just a little bit to do what he wanted--well, not disappoint them to their faces considering they’re just not around anymore. He hasn’t been home in god knows how long, leaving Arizona far behind him. Sunwoo has moved on from Arizona, snagging an accounting job in New York to be as far away from his shitty parents as he possibly could.

Chanhee tells him that, now that he’s free to live his life virtually unrestricted, he should step out of his parent’s metaphorical house and dick someone down--or have someone dick _him_ down, Chanhee didn’t judge. Sunwoo laughs. It’s the brief moment of clarity; that Hollywood film moment where everything in the story is building up, up, up. The audience holds their breath and the hero---which happens to be Sunwoo---tears himself from the comfort of his old life and sets out to get some good ol’ character development. 

“I can set up your Grindr account if you want me to,” Chanhee says, “It’s really easy."

Now was his time for his major character development. 

+

He’s staring at his white-walled cubicle on the fifth floor of a Manhattan office building, tabbing through the same spreadsheet he was staring at when Anne sent him the divorce papers back. It’s the same fucking spreadsheet, the same shitty sticky note reminders to get something for Anne for their anniversary that he hasn’t brought himself to scrap--hell, it’s the same fucking outfit from a year ago to the date. 

Realistically, he should be jumping for joy, now that he's a free man and all, but he’s not. He’s just staring at the same damn things with no fucking clue of when he’s gonna gain the courage to go out and meet a guy. 

So, he does what a logical man does at this point in time: he opens his spreadsheet and works on it. Now, this spreadsheet is a real work or art. It’s taken on a new dimension in the year since the summer of 2019--an awful, humid summer that creeped in like a disgusting creature. Sunwoo wasn’t going to say it directly, but kind of made his grand escape from matrimony anticlimactic. 

So, about the spreadsheet. It’s a sprawling, twenty-five page spreadsheet with detailed diagrams that he spent far too much time on. It’s colour-coded and everything. Surprisingly, there’s an astonishing amount of notes on the sidelines, but no clients have ever been mad at him for being too thorough. In fact, he’s requested the most out of the anyone in the office because of the fact that he _is_ thorough and, as much as he hates his fucking job and a majority of the people within the office, he finds pride in the fact that he’s the best at what he does.

If this spreadsheet was a work-related spreadsheet, he would definitely be requested again. But it’s not. It’s not a work-related spreadsheet. 

Chanhee calls it a midlife crisis guide. Sunwoo calls it being thorough and careful, but he is the same man who finds the idea of taking more than two coffee breaks worrisome, and being in a group of more than twenty people overwhelming if he doesn't introduce himself to every single person in the room so people don’t have room to judge him negatively. No amount of divorce or midlife crises can make him not be like that anymore. 

So, he’s adding hyperlinks to the spreadsheet of every single website of every gay venue in New York on his lunch break. His lunchbox of leftovers from the previous evening stands half eaten to his right, lukewarm after being nuked by the office microwave down the hall--not that the zucchini noodle pasta is inspired at all; the nutrition section of the spreadsheet marks this a 5/10, losing points for the fact that he’s always mortified of oregano getting stuck in his teeth and that his breath is going to smell of garlic and be that way until someone politely--or impolitely, some of his coworkers are total pricks--tells him or until he decides to brush his teeth in the sink of the office bathroom in his own accord. 

Which is another thing that is mortifying now that he thinks of it. Being caught brushing his teeth in the office is a lot like baring your throat--it’s intimate and vulnerable and something he doesn't want to be caught doing in an office bathroom no matter if he carries a small toothbrush around or not. 

He does, by the way, carry a small toothbrush around. A small toothbrush and some solid toothpaste tabs. He even carries deodorant, a comb, and some cheap cologne in a small toiletry bag that he keeps in his briefcase. 

He couldn't be too careful, he works in an office where clients come in for advice all the time for Christ’s sake. He can’t be smelling or looking like a summer swamp creature. That’s disgusting. 

Chanhee looks at him when he finds out about it, barely able to contain his amusement as he picks up the purple travel toothbrush and puts it back in Sunwoo’s carry pouch. “It’s a little slutty, Sunu. Definitely will come in handy on a one-night stand--”

“No, no,” Sunwoo says, “ _No_ , it’s not a sexy toothbrush, Choi Chanhee. There will be no one-night stands where this purple toothbrush will make an appearance, thank you very much.” 

It’s simply an emergency toothbrush. Anything could happen, like garlic breath or oregano stuck in his teeth. Who knows if he’ll get snowed in the office and the only thing that will save him from god awful morning breath is his purple cased toothbrush? 

It’s just a precautionary measure. 

And besides, he doesn't see one night stands in the immediate future anyway. Surprisingly enough, it isn't because of the fact that the thought of casual sex kind of scares him a tiny bit, it's more of the fact that he’s a thirty year old workaholic with barely functioning socialization skills due to intense periods of stress in adulthood _as well as_ his already off the chart anxiety levels.

Seriously though, Sunwoo would love to have a toothbrush for slutty reasons. He wants nothing more than to tell Chanhee that yes, he was getting a good dicking after work every night and that’s why he has that small travel toothbrush in his briefcase. But it just hasn't happened yet, and Sunwoo will live with that disappointment and simultaneous relief. 

The clock on his desk reads twelve fifty-three and he groans, tossing the rest of his food to the side for the time being. He just wants to go home.

  
  
  



End file.
